Europe

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher will be remembered Wednesday during a funeral with full military honors at St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Suzette Grillot, the host of KGOU’s World Views and the Dean of the University of Oklahoma’s College of International Studies, says debates about Thatcher’s legacy and even her funeral suggest Britain is still deeply divided.

Rebecca Cruise and Suzette Grillot discuss the banking crisis in the Mediterranean island nation of Cyprus, and the decision to re-try American student Amanda Knox in Italy.

University of Oklahoma Italian language and literature professor Jason Houston joins Grillot from Arezzo, Italy. He's been following the Catholic Church's transition of power in the Vatican, and speculates what the last voluntary papal resignation in 1294 could teach us about 2013.

Banks in Cyprus are open for normal business for the second day, but with strict restrictions on how much money their clients can access, after being shut down for nearly two weeks to prevent people from draining their accounts as the country's politicians sought a way out of an acute financial crisis.

"They were weakened by the fact that they had too many investments in Greek companies," said Suzette Grillot. "So they've become another victim of the Greek financial crisis."

Suzette Grillot, Joshua Landis, and Rebecca Cruise discuss the election of Pope Francis, the financial situation of the Vatican, and the influence of the New World on the Catholic Church.

Deputy Director for Research at the Mohyla School of Journalism at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy Anastasiia Grynko joins Grillot and Cruise for a conversation about media ethics and transparency in Ukraine and other post-Soviet countries.